Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Sexism and racism in the IT computer profession

Oracle guru Jon Emmons has noted a scary problem in the degradation of the quality of today’s computer professionals.

Once the bastion of professional computer scientists, today we see a horrid influx of open racism and hate speech, even on the web sites of the world’s top vendors.

“If there are any competent Asians, I failed to meet them.”

Asian or Arab origin people are incompetent. My point is proved by the fact that they have always been slaves and will remain in such conditions. The west has always dominated the east.”

The worst part is that this offensive content was not removed from the vendors web site, and Jon notes that it’s not a good idea to tolerate racism:

“More amazing to me is that Oracle doesn’t pursue and remove these posts. After all, for every person who will speak up against this racist crap there are ten who will just leave with a bad taste for the people who host the content.”

In my company I am also seeing sexism, especially from callers with very poor speaking skills.

Enter the Sexists!

Last week we had two calls from people who sounded extremely stupid, and they confirmed this when they refused to speak with Robin, our lead engineer, stating that it was degrading for them to speak to a woman!

Sexism runs rampant in the IT industry

Oh Brother! Robin is a retired Nuclear Engineer and served as the Chief of the North Carolina Radioactive Materials section, and she is one of the most intelligent people I know.

It is astonishing that some ignorant-sounding goofball would have the nerve to tell her that they are superior to her. It’s beyond offensive.

I work for a minority-owned corporation and I detest bigots of all kinds. We don’t want any business from sexist idiots.